The Soviet state airline was founded in 1928 under the name Dobroflot and was reorganized under the name Aeroflot in 1932. Dobroflot, or Dobrovolny Flot, grew out of two former airlines: Dobrolyot, founded in 1923, and Ukvozdukhput, or Ukrainian Airways, founded in 1925. These airlines together connected such cities as Moscow, Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod), Kiev, Kharkov (Kharkiv), and Odessa. After Dobroflot was reorganized as Aeroflot in 1932, progress was rapid; by 1935 its routes spanned the Soviet Union from Leningrad (St. Petersburg) to Vladivostok, with a network also extending southward to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

Aeroflot was responsible for all civil aviation in the Soviet Union. It flew all international and domestic routes in the country, and, in addition to transporting passengers and freight, it was responsible for such operations as crop spraying, aerial surveying, airborne rescue work, and flying ambulance services. Aeroflot used only aircraft made in the Soviet Union. It began the world’s first civilian jet air service in 1956 (using Soviet Tu-104 aircraft) and helped develop the world’s first supersonic airliner, the Soviet Tu-144, which first flew in 1968.

By the late 1980s Aeroflot’s fleet of 1,300 airliners and several thousand smaller planes were serving 3,600 cities and towns in the Soviet Union and flying international routes to more than 100 countries. By 1990, when Aeroflot carried a total of 138 million passengers, it was the world’s largest airline, with about 15 percent of all civil air traffic. It flew to all continents, including, on occasion, Antarctica.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the renamed Aeroflot–Russian International Airlines in 1992 became the state-owned airline of the new Russian government, which remained a majority shareholder into the 21st century. Most domestic routes were assumed by regional airlines. In 1992 Aeroflot began flying aircraft made by foreign manufacturers such as Airbus and Boeing. Assuming the name Aeroflot–Russian Airlines in 2000, the airline remained a leader in the provision of international flights from Russia to more than 40 countries.